OLYMPIA — Washington State Library, a division of the Office of the Secretary of State, recently digitized 1,745 issues of the Seattle Gay News (now known as SGN), as part of the Washington Digital Newspapers (WDN) program.
The SGN was first published in 1974 as the Gay Community Center News, a newsletter by Jim Tully and Jim Arnold, for the Gay Community Center in Seattle. George Bakan, an LGBTQ rights advocate, joined the paper as editor in 1983, co-owned as publisher with Jim Arnold in 1993, and became sole publisher in the early 2000s. The newspaper includes coverage of historic events affecting Washington’s LGBTQ community, including the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and state establishment of marriage equality, from legislation to the passage of Referendum 74 in 2012. After Bakan’s death in 2020, his daughter Angela Cragin continues to publish the paper in print and online.
The digitization of historic SGN issues is the result of a collaboration among the Seattle City Archives, University of Washington, The Seattle Public Library, the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI), and former editor Rick McKinnon to digitize past issues of the paper. More issues will be added later this year to fill the gaps in dates.
The WDN program is funded with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the Library Services & Technology Act for Washington State Library. Additional funding for the SGN digitization was made possible with support from former Seattle City Councilman Tom Rasmussen and by individual contributions to the ALL Foundation on Washington. The WDN website contains over 600,000 pages of historic Washington papers — from 1852 through 2020 — that are accessible online to the public at no charge.
“Historians, genealogists, students, and anyone who wants to learn more about local perspectives on world events now have greater access to their area’s rich history,” said Shawn Schollmeyer, WDN coordinator at Washington State Library. “We are grateful for our many partnerships with museums, libraries, archives, and publishers statewide that share our commitment to preserving our communities’ cultural heritage.”
Washington State Library’s extensive physical newspaper collection in Olympia includes over 6,500 newspaper titles with more than 52,000 reels of microfilm. For more information about WDN and Washington State Library, visit washingtondigitalnewspapers.org and sos.wa.gov/library, or Ask A Librarian about interlibrary loans or visitation appointments.
Washington’s Office of the Secretary of State oversees a number of areas within state government, including managing state elections, registering corporations and charities, and governing the use of the state flag and state seal. The office also manages the State Archives and the State Library, documents extraordinary stories in Washington’s history through Legacy Washington, oversees the Combined Fund Drive for charitable giving by state employees, and administers the state’s Address Confidentiality Program to help protect survivors of crime.